


the roots have to end somewhere

by electrumqueen



Series: the days were bright red [1]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Canonical Character Death, Infidelity, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6139735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron Livesy has a mole daemon. Aaron keeps her tucked up in his shirts, and her head pokes out of his collar when he’s working in the garage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the roots have to end somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> new fandom, new excessive use of richard siken. thanks for the handholding and brainstorming and endless deep dive into #emmerdale, j!

_Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake_

_and dress them in warm clothes again._

 

_-_

 

Senna settled the day Robert turned fourteen. She chose to be a panther: big and black and sleekly, breathtakingly dangerous. Andy’s Piper had settled the year before. She was a calm sheepdog, with shaggy hair and a sweet disposition. Not like Senna, liable to unsheath claw and scare the sheep.

 

The night Senna settled, they crept outside, into the cool dark night. Robert sat on the fence, knees tucked up to his chest, and Senna tore a sheep’s belly open, throat to tail, in one smooth slash. She brought him its heart and they shared it, the two of them; the one.

That night Robert slept with blood beneath his fingernails, in his teeth.

 

-

 

Aaron Livesy has a mole daemon. _She smells like dirt,_ Senna says, wrinkling up her nose, refusing to look close at all. Aaron keeps her tucked up in his shirts, and her head pokes out of his collar when he’s working in the garage. Sometimes she rides in the hood of his sweaters; she’s light enough. Her nose just extends out, and the twin pinpricks of her eyes. She’s a clever burglar, and good with engines. She moves fast in dark, confined spaces.

After Aaron and Ross hold up Home Farm, Aaron’s mole is the one who gets back Chrissie’s ring: clutches it in her paws for Aaron to take, and hand back to Robert, before they walk away.

 

Robert doesn’t mean to fuck him; it just happens. Chrissie’s talking about how well she knows them, and her fingers comb through the fur at the base of Senna’s throat, and they just - need to go.

The air is hot, and electric. Aaron kisses Robert like he needs to be kissed, like he’ll die without it, without Robert’s mouth on his.

Afterwards, Aaron tucks the mole back into his shirt, and Senna shakes her head and stretches out her long limbs and says, “Time to go.”

 

The third time they’re in the barn, Senna picking out her steps with delicate precision, stepping as lightly as she can on the scattered hay. The mole snuffles out of the pile of Aaron’s jacket as he’s pulling his shirt back on over his head, over the scar tissue Robert’s not talking about; and Senna pads forward, leaning her nose down to sniff, making cool eye contact with the mole, who stares right back.

“Her name is Beatrice,” Aaron says, watching them.

“We didn’t ask,” Robert snaps.

Senna stretches and catches herself, padding back to him. She’s not much for comforting but she lets her tail lash against his thigh and that’s close enough.

Aaron shrugs. He does this thing with his mouth, with his eyes. “All right,” he says.

 

-

 

Senna’s not much for other daemons. She likes Chrissie’s Alcaeus well enough; in the wary way of cats they circle each other and sometimes sleep in the same well of sunlight. But Robert’s asked her to lie for them, and she does, and she’ll always do, and that makes things tense in a way that will never heal over.

She and Piper never got on, even when they were young. Even before they settled: cat and dog, opposite incarnate, they were always at each other’s throats. If Piper was a moth Senna was a flame; if Piper was an otter, Senna would be a bird. They’d never liked to share the same space.

Katie’s falcon loved them, once. Heinreth would sleep in the circle of Senna’s body, his head tucked under his wing. But then Senna lied to him and he caught them, and that was the end of that possible world.

 

Now, it’s probably Vic’s Samson that Senna likes most: a little Tarsier with clever hands and big eyes. Sometimes when Robert and Vic are getting a pint, she’ll let him sit with her and untangle her fur. Not often, though. Only if Robert’s had a few, and Andy and Piper are nowhere to be found.

 

Senna never touches the daemons of his one night stands. She doesn’t disapprove; she likes it as much as Robert does, that hot and fleeting connection. She understands the necessity of them. But to have your soul touch another, that’s a complication: that’s strings. You don’t need those, not when you’ve got a home to go back to.

She doesn’t like Aaron: she bristles up, defensive, when Robert says his name. She doesn’t like that Robert keeps going back.

Robert keeps telling her: he can stop anytime he wants.

 

-

 

Katie and Andy have a beautiful wedding: her falcon on her shoulder, his sheepdog at his side. The day is beautiful, the sun is bright; there is only one objection and that summarily dismissed. Katie is beautiful and Andy handsome; there is nothing to mar the day.

Except for the rings. Which Robert called to have inscribed, back before Aaron brought him to his senses.

Oops.

 

Heinreth’s there in a heartbeat, screeching through the air with his talons going for Senna’s eyes.

Senna bristles at him: they can win all fights if they have to, Senna’s big and strong and powerful. She’s beat Heinreth before and he knows it - but Chrissie puts her hand on Robert’s shoulder and Robert swallows and pulls his daemon back.

His face is already sore from the time Andy punched him, and Senna’s still got sore patches from Piper’s teeth. And it’s - it is their fault.

Senna puts her head down and slinks out. Robert winces and follows her.

 

Senna says, “We probably should have remembered about the rings.”

Robert smoothes his hand along the length of her spine. Her tail twitches through the air, drawing figure eights. “Would have been useful.”

 

Aaron’s wearing his one suit; Beatrice is out for once, perched on his shoulder. There’s not enough space in the jacket for her to snuggle against his chest, so her paws lean down and catch in his lapel.

He smiles and Robert smiles back. Guilt is pounding through his stomach but it’s easier, with Aaron here; with the warmth of Aaron’s smile pouring through his veins, setting him at ease.

 

-

 

Robert and Senna _like_ Chrissie. They love Chrissie and Alcaeus. They like the Whites and being back at Home Farm and the power of it.

And Robert loves Chrissie. She’s beautiful and good in bed. She makes him laugh and she’s sweet. He likes the smell of her hair and the fierceness of her loyalty. He likes how she loves her son; he even likes Lawrence, as much as they had to fight and scheme and lie to earn his trust.

He likes that Chrissie feels like something he has earned. Like he has finally made himself good.

 

Chrissie loves Senna. They look beautiful together; Robert’s beautiful fiancee with his beautiful daemon at her side, both of them with their dark, shining hair.

Senna doesn’t particularly like to be touched but she’ll bear it from Chrissie: Chrissie rests her hand on Senna’s head and her fingernails are blood-red. Like claws.

Alcaeus is very soft. When Robert touches him he feels like silk, like he’s slipping through Robert’s fingers.

 

-

 

The Dingles all have biblical names. All their daemons are named for angels, and almost all of them are wolves; the ones that aren’t wolves are feral looking dogs.

Senna thinks it’s hilarious. She mocks them every time she sees them: low, just for Robert to hear. When she can she picks fights, just accidentally stretching out a paw as Cain’s giant grey wolf picks her way past.

Chas’ big black wolf is just as ready to fight as Senna is; always hackles up, teeth bared. Senna likes to purr at him, and wash her paws. They were like this even when they were younger: cats and fucking dogs, and Debbie Dingle, in the middle of it.

 

“I’m not a Dingle,” Aaron says. “I’m a Livesy.”

“Good job, that,” Robert says. He reaches out to rest his fingers on Aaron’s wrist, just above the curve of his belly, where Beatrice has nestled. He’s put his top on again: _Aaron, Aaron, Aaron,_ says a tiny voice in Robert’s head, but he stamps it down; _not your business, Rob_. “Senna won’t touch a dog daemon, not for anything.”

Not after Debbie, at least. But that doesn’t seem like appropriate conversation, not for right now, not when they are lying in the barn and Aaron smells like Robert, and Robert’s not sure that he’s ever liked something so much as the smell of him: Robert, and Robert, and underneath it _Aaron._ Something mingled; something new.

“Glad she approves, then,” Aaron says. He’s meaning to be funny but that’s the thing about Aaron, he means what he says. He hangs on Robert’s words, and they make him light up, when Robert plays things right. It’s painfully easy to make Aaron happy.

(It is, of course, as Senna reminds him often, equally easy to make Aaron sad.

This is what makes him useful. But Robert tries not to think about that, so much.)

Robert hates it, the way he’s starting to care about the hope in Aaron’s eyes. How good it makes him feel: like he’s won something, like everything’s snapped into place.

Aaron’s leaning into him like he wants to be kissed.

Robert likes indulging him. It makes Robert feel good. Sometimes it makes him furious: Aaron is _so easy,_ it’s not hard to make him happy, but nobody else _does it_. Why anyone wouldn’t want that - Aaron’s smile, Aaron’s laugh, Aaron’s careful quiet happiness - Robert will never understand.

Robert lifts his hand and smooths Aaron’s hair back, just to keep his fingers in it, and then he leans down and presses his mouth to Aaron’s and kisses him, and keeps kissing.

 

Senna paces away from them. She refuses to look at Aaron and refuses to play nice.

“A _mole,_ ” she says, pulling her lips back from her teeth in disgust.

“Better than a dog,” Robert says. “Besides, you’ve got a cat. You’ve got Alcaeus.”

She turns up her nose and goes to sprawl in the sun. Later, she catches him a dead bird to leave on Katie’s doorstep. Good and pointed: Heinreth deserves the lesson.

 

-

 

The worst of it is that Robert _likes_ Aaron. He’s funny, and sharp, and sometimes unkind; a thug, honestly. A fucking _Dingle._ He smashed up Robert’s Austin Healey because Robert _offered him money._ He’s so deeply damaged Robert can see it on his skin, and violent besides - and being around him makes Robert so, so happy.

When it is just the two of them, it’s like there’s no one else in the world: like the rest of the world doesn’t even need to bother, could disappear and Robert and Senna wouldn’t care, not at all.

 

Beatrice blinks her tiny eyes and Senna says, “Okay, Rob,” and stretches out a paw, and Beatrice reaches out her own, and then their daemons are touching.

“Robert,” Aaron says. Tension coils through his voice - the tautness that Robert can feel stretching through his own body, too.

Robert puts an arm around his shoulders; Aaron likes that, likes being held, kept close; likes to have proof that Robert wants him. “Shh,” he says, loose with orgasm and goodwill and the warmth of Aaron’s smile low in his belly. “Look at that.”

Beatrice pads up to Senna and there’s a pause, just a moment, before Senna picks her up very gently with her teeth at the nape of Beatrice’s neck, and then starts to drag her tongue along the line of Beatrice’s body - washing her, like a kitten, like she used to do when Vic’s Samson was young.

Robert tenses, worried about the sharpness of Senna’s teeth, of her claws; but Aaron doesn’t, stays loose against Robert’s shoulder and presses a kiss to Robert’s jaw and Robert feels his pulse, steady and easy, soothe Robert, too.

 

“Maybe she’s not so bad,” Senna says. “I still don’t like him, though.”

Robert scratches her behind the ears, the spot she likes that makes her paws all stretch out. “That’s all right,” he says. “You don’t have to like him. He doesn’t mean anything.”

 

-

 

Katie falls. Heinreth screams, wings flared, beak open, and is gone.

Senna leaps, a controlled beautiful descent, but it’s too late: they’ll hear that sound, the snap of her neck, for as long as they live.

“Robert,” Senna says. “Robert, what do we do?”

Robert is shaking. He falls to his knees and buries his face in his daemon’s fur and breathes in one shaking, enormous sob.

Then he calls Aaron.

 

Miraculously, Aaron comes. Perhaps it is not a miracle so much, after all. Aaron, in his grey hoodie, his eyes baleful in the rain: Aaron and his little daemon, with her bright eyes and deft paws.

Aaron, come to save him. It’s terrifying, the weight of it.

Aaron Livesy, in love.

 

Robert’s never run so fast, not in his entire life. Senna at his side: the two of them running, one being, alight.

 

-

 

Aaron is an open book, but nobody else seems to be able to read it. He is running himself to the ground, his little daemon in a pack on his back, and nobody has stopped him. Nobody has caught him and held him still and made him remember to breathe.

“It’s not fair,” Senna says. “Why should we have to handle this? Don’t they have a family? Friends?”

Robert strokes her back, the spine of her. Her fur is sleek and soft. he’s been doing it more and more lately, searching for reassurance; she is the only one who understands what they did. “You trust the Dingles with anything, do you?”

She laughs. “A fair point,” she says. Her claws extend, and then she retracts them. “I don’t like it.”

“I know,” Robert says. “But we can’t leave them.”

“Can’t?”

“They’ll break,” Robert says. “You know they’ll break.”

She licks her incisors, eyes flashing in the light. “Yeah,” she says. “They’re weak.”

“We’ll get caught,” Robert says. “Katie and Heinreth, they died because of us.”

She nods. “So we make them feel better,” she says. “We make them depend on us. Easier to manage.”

He pulls her into his lap and she sprawls, warm and heavy, across his thighs. “Yeah,” he says. “We can do this.”

 

Aaron punches him in the face. More than once.

Senna’s got claw marks across her face, across her nose. Beatrice has surprisingly sharp claws, and teeth.

“We deserved that,” Senna says. She had held still, like him. Let it happen.

It was the necessary thing to do.

He kneels by his daemon’s side and feels the mud settle in his hair, on his face. “Yeah,” he says. He can feel the bruise coming up on his cheekbone, nothing compared to the sting on Senna’s throat and belly; none of that compared to the way Aaron had looked at them: screaming inside, lost. Something they had done.

Like Andy and Piper, teetering on the brink of a very long fall.

Their fault.

Theirs to fix, now.

 

-

 

“She’s quiet,” Aaron said. They were sitting next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, but not quite touching.

Robert blinked. “What?”

“You never shut up,” Aaron said, easily. “But she’s - you can barely hear her walk.”

“I shut up,” Robert said. “Just because I have things worth saying-”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “I’m not calling you loud, mate. I’m just calling her quiet.”

Senna stretched, easy and beautiful. Tossing her head the way she did when she wanted to be looked at, when she was showing off.

Aaron looked at her and there was all this longing in it: the fingers of his right hand twitched, just barely, but he held himself still, contained.

“Not a good idea,” Robert said, catching his breath on a sigh.

“Right,” Aaron said, like he’d been slapped, and was reeling. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s fine,” Robert said, because Aaron always took things personally. He kissed Aaron’s throat, to take away some of the sting. “She’s lovely, I know.”

“She’s beautiful,” Aaron said, leaning into Robert, letting Robert take his chin in his hands and turn his face away, to kiss.

 

-

 

“I love you,” Robert says. His throat feels raw. He’s all out: this is what he has left. “All right? I love you.”

Senna crosses the space between them and settles at Aaron’s side, head tipped up: an offering.

Aaron looks at Robert, wide-eyed; his hand hovers over Senna’s shoulder, fingertips not-quite-touching. “Say it again,” he says.

Senna looks at Robert and then at Aaron. “We love you,” she says. “We couldn’t bear it if you were gone.”

“Oh,” Aaron says, and he stares, and then he looks at Senna and buries his hands in her fur. There is no sound but it feels like there ought to be. Like this - like this is big, bigger than two men standing in a floral living room, talking around the scope of a murder.

Robert shivers from the force of it; Aaron’s hands holding tight to his own soul.

“Don’t let go,” he says, feeling Senna nod, feeling Senna _want._

It has never felt like this before. No one else has ever touched Senna and made her feel safe.

Aaron breathes out, shaking. “I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”

Beatrice slips out of Aaron’s hood and Robert reaches down and cradles her, rubs his fingers across her belly, across the little raised bald patches of old trauma, the scars he regrets ever speaking of, ever hurling at Aaron like a weapon.

(Like this _I love you_ that he is wielding, now.)

 

“We’re okay?” Robert says. His palm settles over Beatrice’s heart, the quick-time beat of it thick against his own pulse.

“We’re okay,” Aaron says, forehead pressed to Robert’s daemon’s. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t have to. “We’re okay.”

Beatrice blinks at Robert, closing a paw over his wrist. “As long as you don’t lie to us again.”

“We won’t,” Senna says. “We swear.”

 

“We had to say it,” he tells her. It’s still raining as they leave the pub, and her paws sink into the gravel. “It was the only thing we could do.”

“I know,” she says, resting her head against his thigh. “We agreed, Rob. We did what we had to.”

 

-

 

Aaron tried to call it off, more than once. Robert was cruel; Robert was in love with someone else. There were a hundred good reasons to leave: even Robert could see them.

It was always easy to get them back. Senna, batting a playful paw in Beatrice’s direction; Robert, throwing Aaron a smile. A misaligned truth here, a kiss there, a promise to be better. Robert has two things to his advantage: he is beautiful, and he knows the truth of things.

 

Christmas Day: Andy and Katie furious, sitting in Aaron’s passenger seat with Senna trying to shake the rain out of her fur. Aaron snapping _we’re done_ and Beatrice baring her teeth, right up in Senna’s face. Robert, with the bruises from Andy’s hands sinking into his cheek, his ribs; Senna, marked up from the familiar weight of Piper and her teeth and her claws.

Robert and Senna, remembering how long ago Katie had kissed Robert and Heinreth had run his beak through Senna’s fur. The mess that had been Andy’s first wedding, and the guilt of letting Vic down, too.

 

They turned things around. Not because Aaron had asked them to - but without him maybe they wouldn’t have. Chrissie couldn’t understand where they were, where they’d been.

There was something about Aaron that made Robert think: they weren’t so different. Or they hadn’t been, not so long ago.

There was something about the pride in Aaron’s eyes that made Robert want to kiss him. Made Robert dream about kissing him.

 

Robert remembered kissing him, the second time, the third.

Remembered the idea of Aaron with someone else; the Barton boy with the largest dog, a loping setter with big dozy eyes.

He had wanted - not Aaron, not yet. But the freedom of it had made him sick.

Robert remembered catching Aaron with his hands, and holding him tight, and not letting him go.

 

Now this was all he dreamed about: Aaron, caught and held and _his._ But this was what dreaming was for: to want, and never have.

 

-

 

Chas and her fucking wolf: of course they wouldn’t let Robert go alone to find Aaron and Beatrice, lost in the woods somewhere. Of course they wouldn’t leave well enough alone: of course Chas would run her mouth about telling the whole fucking world, about blowing Robert’s life wide open.

Baruch is big but so is Senna, and Senna’s got the element of surprise while he’s got his nose to the ground; she’s stretching out her claws, ready to pounce, when Chas yells, “Aaron!” for the twentieth time and this time there’s an answering cry.

Before they can catch breath Senna is moving, a blur through the trees, so fast Robert can barely keep up.

 

Aaron’s on the ground, breath rough, blood on his face; there’s a little lump at his chest, the tiny mass of Beatrice’s brown fur. They’re shivering, both of them.

Robert calls for an ambulance, tripping over his own words, fast as he can. _Please. You have to come. We need them._

Baruch howls, the cry of a wolf in pain, of losing pack. Chas falls to her knees, stripping out of her jacket and pressing it to Aaron’s body, but -

“Senna,” Robert says, and she nods, doesn’t even hesitate before she settles her paws on his chest, sprawling along the top of Aaron’s body, all the warmth of her pressed against him.

“Robert,” Aaron whispers, and he sounds like he’s barely there, only a thread of him left. “Robert.”

Beatrice shifts, tucked against Aaron’s throat.

“I’ve got her,” Robert says. He can feel Chas staring at him but nothing else in the world matters.

He picks up Aaron’s daemon, and puts her in his shirt, cradles her with one palm against his heart. Willing the heat of his body to get to her.

“It’s all gonna be all right,” he says, to the daemon, to the man. “We’re here. We’re not going anywhere.”

 

-

 

Robert had given Aaron money and he was making something of it: the thrill of that caught them both, caught Robert and made him flush with it, with pride and fondness and something else, something Senna didn’t want to touch. The business was just an excuse but it felt like something else, something more.

“I hate the scrapyard,” Senna said, picking her way through it. Robert had been a mechanic long ago, in another life: Senna had spent all his shifts lying in the cleanest corner she could find, trying not to touch anything.

“It’s ours,” Robert said, meaning _it’s theirs and ours, we made it together_ and finding that the words of it stuck in his throat, something secret, something terrifying. The kind of terrifying like a rollercoaster, like an oncoming storm, the kind of electric that got it in his blood and flushed him with want, all the way through.

Adam’s terrier saw them coming: she ran up and sniffed at Senna, overeager like Adam himself. Senna deigned to let her, remaining still and serene, and then gently shook her aside to proceed on her way.

Paddy and Adam were in the portacabin: Paddy with his garter snake curled around his throat like a necklace; Adam leaning against the window. They were talking about something: Robert didn’t care. He tossed out pleasantries, thoughtless, automatic.

Neither of them mattered because Aaron was there, Beatrice sitting on his shoulder, and she lifted her head when she saw them, drifting towards Robert so fast she toppled over and Aaron had to catch her with his hand, and then look up and smile when he saw Robert there, in the doorway.

He felt Senna move under his palm, muscles shifting with want.

“Hey,” Robert said.

“Hey,” Aaron said, back. Beatrice slipped out of his hand; scampered down and ran along the floor: Senna met her, nose to nose, breath to breath.

Robert’s breath quickened and he felt himself smile back, in answer; mirroring Aaron, like their daemons.

 

“Perhaps it’s not so bad,” Senna said.

“It’s ours,” Robert said, smiling, and she smiled back at him, and twined around his ankles, warm from the light of the sun.

 

-

 

“They aren’t yours to have,” says Chas. “Do you understand? You’re no good for them. You’ll never leave her, you’re only going to hurt my son.”

“We’ll protect them,” Senna says. “Didn’t we? We will. Always.” She looked at Robert, a flicker of a glance that meant: _we said we loved them._

Baruch stands with his nose to hers: they’re almost of a size, he making up what he lacks in bulk with gravitas and age and scars silvering through his fur. “We don’t believe you,” he says, harsh like his human, and bitter. “You’re going to hurt them. You’ve already hurt them.”

Robert catches his daemon’s shoulder, fingers flat in her fur. He doesn’t know who is being reassured, who is leaning on who. “You don’t want to do this,” he says. “We only want what’s best for them, all right?”

“It’s sure as hell not you,” snaps Chas, but then her shoulders slump and Baruch takes a step back, tail down to the floor. “But it would be worse for them if it came out, wouldn’t it.”

Robert exhales, like relief, like a blessing. “That’s the right decision,” he says. “She’s - they’d hurt him. Not just me.”

He loves his wife. He is under no illusions.

“We know,” Baruch says. He shakes his head, short and sharp. “If we could - we would rip your throats out.”

Robert tightens his hand on the back of Senna’s neck. “I’m glad we’re in agreement,” he says.

 

-

 

“I love you,” Aaron said, like someone had ripped the words out of him, out of his chest. His face was red and there was all this hope in his eyes and Robert couldn’t breathe. “And I think you do, too.”

Robert’s heart thundered. He stood, very still.

There was a growl from the other end of the room: Senna, pacing, tail lashing the air as though it had personally offended her. Then she jumped, and caught the mole between her paws, and put her teeth to its throat.

Aaron froze, still as stone. “Robert,” he said.

“No,” Robert said, sick and furious and white-hot with Senna’s rage. “No, you don’t.” _You can’t._

Beatrice froze, prey reflexes holding her still. Even when they were young, Senna had hated to be prey; it had made them both feel weak, and vulnerable.

Senna snarled.

“She’ll do it,” Robert said.

Aaron shook his head. “Robert,” he said. “Let her go.”

Beatrice said, “We’re sorry, Senna. We take it back. We won’t.”

They had never heard her voice before. It was small but strangely warm; and sad. Very, very sad.

Senna looked at Robert: claws out, his lover’s daemon pressed against the creaking floorboards.

“Please,” Aaron said.

“I never trusted you,” Senna said: to the daemon, to the man. “Not for a moment.” With a flick of her paw the mole fell to the floor, landing on all fours, and ran towards them, to Aaron, who stooped and caught her and looked up at Robert, with such force Robert couldn’t look away; he reeled, as though it was his daemon who had been so roughly treated.

Aaron’s face was wet. Robert remembered suddenly and inanely how good it felt to kiss Aaron when he was laughing: when Robert had done something Aaron found, inexplicably, hilarious, and Robert had to press his lips to Aaron’s to shut him up.

Robert shook his head and went to his daemon. Together, they went to the door. He spared one look back:

Aaron Livesy, kneeling on the ground, with his daemon cradled in his hands, pressed against his heart. He was crying.

Robert looked away, dropping a hand to his daemon’s fur, and they ran.

 

-

 

Senna settles her long body onto Robert’s chest, like she did to keep Aaron warm: paws on his shoulders, face tucked against his throat.

“We can’t leave them,” she says. “You promised me we would leave them.”

“We can’t be with them,” Robert says, wrapping his arms around her, fingers buried deep in the softness of her fur. “We didn’t choose them.”

“I touched him,” Senna says. She’s shivering, brittle, terrified. “I touched him to save him. Every time I touch him, Rob - it’s not supposed to feel like that. It doesn’t feel like that with her.”

Robert’s heart is hammering in his chest.

“It’s not supposed to be like this,” Senna repeats. “We swore _vows._ I never wanted anyone like him.”

“We’ll fix it,” he says. “We can fix it. I promise. We’ll do whatever it takes.”

“We can’t let them go,” Senna says, again. She is not talking about the person they married.

He presses his forehead to his daemon’s. “We couldn’t bear it,” he admits. “I know.”

 

-

 

They were in a hotel. It smelled anonymous: Senna had prowled every corner of it, searching for any of the scents that might alarm her, but now she was satisfied.

Aaron had put on a tie and he kept smiling, softly, like it was a secret, every time he looked at Robert. He was rubbish at secret-keeping.

It ought to worry at Robert’s heart, like it did at Senna, but it didn’t; it just made him want to smile back, a mirror for Aaron, reflecting his truth of his joy.

Beatrice poked her head out of Aaron’s lapel and Robert felt himself reaching out; caught himself, held still.

“It’s all right,” Aaron said. “Go on.”

Senna, on the settee, raised her head. Pretending nonchalance, but all the lines of her were tense, muscles fully corded. Ready to spring.

“I dare ya,” Aaron said. The smile curled up the corners of his mouth and Robert wanted-

Robert exhaled, dropped his fingers to the tiny head, where the brush of her fur met his fingertips. And then - “That’s nice,” he said, startled. He hadn’t expected that. He’d thought she would feel hard, or bristly; uncomfortable, at least. Even though that seemed stupid now, with Aaron, who opened up every part of himself every time Robert asked, and even when he didn’t.

Aaron rolled his eyes but the smile was still in place and Beatrice nudged her head into Robert’s touch. “You thought she wouldn’t be?”

“Like velvet,” Robert said. He lifted his gaze: staring, now, at Aaron’s mouth, at the spill of Aaron’s eyelashes. “Can I-”

“Yeah,” Aaron said, eyes steady on Robert’s, smile falling from his mouth as he leaned in. “Do it."

Aaron’s daemon felt soft, infinitely easy to touch. He followed the curve of her head, traced the shape of her. She let him, staying very still, as though he was the one who would spook.

She was lovely. He loved the feel of her, the way she fit against his palm. Like he was meant to touch her, like he’d been waiting his whole life for this.

Aaron sighed and made a noise - this low, sharp sound, a sound of desire so strong that it rocked Robert back on his heels. Suddenly the whole room was electric and Robert’s body was coursing with it, a live-wire need he’d never felt before, couldn’t even think of denying.

“Aaron,” he said.

“ _Robert,_ ” Aaron said, and brought his hand up to curl around Robert’s cheek, paralleling Robert’s hand on Aaron’s daemon. “Robert, please.”

Robert kissed him, then; like that first breath after drowning, like a first gulp of water in the desert. He had never felt something so inevitable but for the first time in his life he didn't mind it, taking the predictable path.

 

“Oh, Robert,” Senna said, eyes bright and gleaming in the darkness, like twin moons. “What have you gotten us into?”

  
  


 


End file.
